We Exult in Our Tribulations

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also
we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which
we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only
this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that
tribulation brings about perseverance; 4 and perseverance, proven
character; and proven character, hope; 5 and hope does not
disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our
hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Faith in God

What happens to make a person a Christian - a child of God?
First, the gospel is made known to him - the historical fact that
God sent his Son into the world to die for sinners and to rise from
the dead triumphant over death and hell for all who believe in him.
The Holy Spirit opens the heart to see in this gospel that Christ
is trustworthy and more to be desired than all human treasures. And
so the heart trusts in Christ for all that God promises to be for
us in him. When that faith happens, we are justified before God. In
other words, by that faith the Spirit of God unites us to Christ so
that his death becomes our death, and his life becomes our life.
God laid on him the iniquities that we performed, and God laid on
us the righteousness that he performed. He takes our sin, though he
didn't perform it. And we take his righteousness, though we didn't
perform it. And so by the faith that unites us to Christ we stand
before God forgiven for all our sins and righteous with the imputed
righteousness of Christ.

On the basis of that great foundation that makes us Christians,
Paul says in Romans 5:1 that we have peace with God - and calls us
to enjoy that peace (best manuscript tradition says, "let us have
peace with God") - and says that we now stand in grace (verse 2),
and says that we exult (and ought to exult) in the hope of the
glory of God. The glory of God and our exulting enjoyment of it, is
the goal of justification by faith. This is where all of Christian
life is moving. Justification by faith is designed to help us exult
in the hope of the glory of God. We are reckoned right before God
so that we can finally be with God and see him and enjoy him as the
infinitely satisfying Reality forever and ever.

Tests to Your Faith

But before that eternal day, something else comes in the
Christian life, namely, tribulations. This is what verses 3-5 are
about. How shall we understand them and respond to them? Paul's
answer is that they have a gracious and purposeful place in the
Christian life and that we should therefore exult in them.

Now I don't take this lightly or say it easily. Today, as God
would have it, is the International Day of Prayer for the
Persecuted Church. One brief look at the brochure in our worship
folder will take away all flippancy and levity and superficiality
from our talk about afflictions. At the bottom of the first page it
says,

Christians who aren't killed are often subjected to brutal
torture and brainwashing - attempts to force them to recant their
faith. In some parts of the world, Christian women are brutally
raped to break their allegiance to Christ, while children are sold
into slavery for as little as $15. Thousands more languish year
after year in prisons or hard labor camps.

When Paul says in Romans 5:3, "And not only this (that is, not
only do we exult in the hope of the glory of God), but we also
exult in our tribulations" - when he says this, he is not speaking
as a spectator but a fellow-sufferer. Paul's sufferings were long
and hard. But in 2 Corinthians 12:9, he said, "[Christ] has said to
me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in
weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my
weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.'" Notice,
just as it says, "We exult in tribulations" here in Romans 5:3, he
says in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that he "most gladly" boasts or "exults"
(same word) over his weaknesses. Paul practiced what he
preached.

And what he means by "weaknesses" in 2 Corinthians 12:9 he shows
us in the next verse: "Therefore I am well content with weaknesses,
with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with
difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am
strong." The whole array of distresses and weaknesses and
sicknesses and difficulties are meant by these afflictions in
Romans 5:3, not just persecutions. And Paul says he exults in them,
instead of murmuring and complaining about them.

So as we look at the role of afflictions in the Christian life,
keep in mind that they are any tests to your faith. They could be
tribulations from loss of health, or tribulations in broken or
strained relationships, or tribulations in vocational hardships and
disappointments, or tribulations in accidents or natural disasters,
or tribulations in verbal or physical assaults, or simply everyday
inconveniences from traffic jams to plumbing problems. Anything
that makes life harder and threatens your faith in the goodness and
power and wisdom of God is tribulation.

These are normal, not abnormal. It would be abnormal for a
Christian not to have them, because Paul taught all the churches,
according to Acts 14:22, "Through many tribulations we must enter
the kingdom of God."

"Exult in Tribulation"

Now he says in Romans 5:3 the astonishing thing: "Exult in
them." This is what he does. This is what he calls us to do. How
can this be? The answer from verse 2 is that we are standing in
grace. This is God's omnipotent power to help us though we don't
deserve it. You don't hold the key to this wonderful, supernatural
way of life that should set Christians off from the world, God
does. The power to rejoice and exult in tribulation comes from
omnipotent grace that we receive by trusting in God's promises.

Here's an illustration of it from 2 Corinthians 8:1-2. Paul is
talking about the way the Macedonian Christians rejoiced in their
afflictions even in great poverty. Notice the key: "Now, brethren,
we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given
in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction
their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the
wealth of their liberality." Do you see the key: "the grace of God"
was given to them. And that produced an indomitable joy in a great
ordeal (or test) of affliction. And that joy in affliction
overflowed in love.

How are we doing today when things go bad for us? Do we rest in
the grace of God and experience joy in God and keep on loving
people? Or do we forget the grace of God, overflow with complaining
and become self-absorbed and critical instead of loving? So
omnipotent power of grace is the key. We stand in this grace, Paul
says in verse 2.

But grace does not work like magic. It works through truth. You
will know the truth and the truth will set you free (John 8:32) -
from complaining and from paralyzing frustration and from a
critical spirit. Grace opens the eyes of the heart to truth and
inclines the heart to embrace it and live by it.

Grace Works through Truth

What truth? That is what the rest of this text is about. There
are four truths that Paul wants us to know and meditate on. That is
how grace will change us into peaceful, joyful people who exult in
our afflictions.

1. Tribulation brings about perseverance.

Romans 5:3 says, "And not only this, but we also exult in our
tribulations, knowing [that is, because we know] that tribulation
brings about perseverance." Another word for "perseverance" is
"endurance." In other words, if something happens in your life that
is hard and painful and frustrating and disappointing, and, by
grace, your faith looks to Christ and to his power and his
sufficiency and his fellowship and his wisdom and his love, and you
don't give in to bitterness and resentment and complaining, then
your faith endures and perseveres. It becomes stronger. How is it
stronger? It's stronger the way tempered steel is stronger: it
takes more to break it. Tribulation is like the fire that tempers
the steel of faith. So when Paul says, "Tribulation brings about
perseverance," he means that the fiery tests of trouble are meant
by God to make your faith unbreakable.

That's the first truth that grace uses to make us into joyful
people who exult in tribulations and love others. The second truth
is this:

2. Perseverance brings about proven character.

Romans 5:3-4a, "We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that
tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance [brings
about] proven character." The focus here is on this word "proven"
(dokimen). The idea is that when you put metal through a fiery
testing and it comes out on the other side persevering and
enduring, what you call that metal is "proven" or "authentic" or
"genuine." That's the sense here. When you go through tribulation,
and your faith is tested, and it perseveres, what you get is a
wonderful sense of authenticity. You feel that your faith is real.
It has been tested. It has stood the test with perseverance. And it
is therefore real, authentic, proven, genuine.

That's the second truth that God's grace uses to make us into
the kind of people who exult in tribulation. The third follows from
it:

3. Proven character brings about hope.

Romans 5:3-4, "We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that
tribulation
brings about perseverance; (4) and perseverance [brings
about] proven character; and proven character [brings about] hope."
Now how is that? How does "proven character" bring about hope?

Isn't the answer that when your faith has been tried in
affliction, and persevered, and thus proven genuine and authentic
you know you are real and not a fake Christian and that gives you
hope that you really are a child of God and will inherit his glory.
In other words, one of the great obstacles to a full and strong
hope in the glory of God is the fear that we are hypocrites - that
our faith is not real and that we just inherited it from our
parents and have been motivated by things that are not honoring to
God. One of the purposes of afflictions in our lives is to give us
victory over those fears and make us full of hope and confidence as
the children of God.

So God takes us through hard times to temper the steel of our
faith and show us that we are real, authentic, genuine, proven, and
in that way give us hope that we really will inherit the glory of
God and not come into judgment.

Now there remains one more truth that the grace of God uses to
make us into the kind of people who exult in tribulations. Actually
it's not just a truth but an experience:

4. The hope that is inspired by proven character will not
disappoint us, because God gives us the experience of his love in
our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Romans 5:5, "Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God
has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who
was given to us."

Now what shall we say about this? Well, we should say a lot more
than we have time to say this morning. So what I am going to do is
say something and then continue with this verse and fold verses 6-8
into the answer the week after Thanksgiving.

God Means for Christians to Have Assurance

But this morning I will say only this: If you are a Christian,
God really means for you to have assurance that you are going to
inherit the glory of God. You are going to go to heaven when you
die, not hell; and you are going be a part of Christ's future
kingdom, and live forever in the new heavens and the new earth with
unbroken joy and no affliction. The truth of verse 5 is that God
gives assurance to us through the Holy Spirit.

Paul knows that there is more than one enemy to our assurance.
One is the fear that we might be hypocrites. We might be fake
Christians, no Christians at all, even though we are religious and
belong to the Church. He teaches us here that affliction is God's
great proving ground for the genuineness of faith. And he
graciously takes us through trials so that our faith will be seen
as genuine and we will have hope because we are not hypocrites.

But there is another enemy to our assurance. What if the object
of our faith is false? Not just our faith, but what we put our
faith in. What if we make it through tribulation with proven faith
and growing hope, and in the end that hope proves to have been
built on sand? We thought God loved us, but it turns out he didn't.
He may not even exist. That too is a great obstacle to our
assurance.

And Paul's answer here to it is not an argument, but an
experience. There are arguments, and Paul is willing to use them.
But here he simply says, your hope, rooted in the genuineness of
your proven faith, will not disappoint you. And you can know this
because the Holy Spirit has come into your life and has begun to
pour the love of God experientially into your heart. This is not
mainly an argument. This is mainly a personal experience of God's
love flooding the heart with an immediate sense of God's reality
and love.

You can see how big and wonderful this is, and why I feel the
need to linger on it longer. So in two weeks I am going to pick it
up here. Then in the meantime, would you join me in praying that
God increase this experience in our lives. That he make it
unmistakable. That there be a great movement of the Spirit in us
and among us to give not only the assurance that our faith is
genuine, but that it is well founded in the love of God for us.

And as you pray, don't count it strange when the afflictions
come. They will come. But rejoice and exult in the love of God to
use them to temper the steel of your faith and confirm in your
heart that you are indeed the child of God through faith.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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